Review: Straight White Men by Christopher Walker

Well Christmas has arrived on the London stage complete with tinsel and tree. But it’s in a very contemporary form at the Southwark Playhouse.

Straight White Men delivers what it ‘says on the tin,’ if not on the poster. It is an intriguing, but somehow, unfinished work.

The plot concerns the Christmas gathering of one American family, a father and his three sons.

The Mother has clearly died, and it is consequently an exclusively masculine atmosphere.

There is a lot of boisterous horsing around, the boys acting out scenes from different movies.

Trying to name them all will put you through your paces – it’s all quite exhausting.

Matt, the eldest brother played by Charlie Condou, clearly has something that he is not happy about, but it is not exactly clear.

His brothers speculate whether he wants to come out, while his father thinks it is money problems that trouble him.

Matt himself just feels he has made a conscious decision to “tune out.” Part of the “Great Resignation” gripping America at present.

Brother Drew thinks this is clearly a sign of depression, and wants to get Matt to see his shrink in New York.

Cary Crankson gives a very good performance. Less sympathetic is Jake, played with great energy by Alex Mugnaioni. He is a recently divorced investment banker tortured by his own “white liberal guilt.”

This is hardly surprising given that the boys have been raised playing “Privilege” a distorted version of monopoly their parents put together to ram home their complexes.

Rather worryingly it seems to have backfired, as despite having had a mixed-race marriage and children, Jake says he deliberately takes only “white male colleagues” on pitches.

The father Ed (a capable Simon Rouse from The Bill) seems a very likeable character, but when he observes “anyone would think I brought you up badly” you can’t help but agree with him.

At base, this is a classic play about a family gathering and falling out, then coming together again. But it is clear that the writer Young Jean Lee, who describes herself as “A Korean American playwright whose work revels in subversive explorations of identity” is intending much more.

It is hard to get a clear picture of the importance of orientation, race, or gender, when the characters all tick the same boxes and do not interact on stage with any gay, black, or female characters.

Race is overwhelmingly dominant in the US arts scene at present and this play had a successful run on Broadway. But this obsession translates poorly here, and the real kernel of this play is an exploration of “toxic masculinity” that is not race specific.

You can’t help comparing this play with the excellent Foxes at Theatre 503. A play about gay black men grappling with similar issues. It is noteworthy that all the characters here seem to have difficult relationships with women.

Overseeing this family gathering are two characters who tell us they are very much not “straight white men.”

In a device reminiscent of classical Greek drama, like Gods Kim Tatum and Kamari Romeo pull the strings of the characters as if puppeteers.

This made for a wonderful poster advertising the play, and is an interesting idea. But one which simply doesn’t work.

It feels like an afterthought, super-imposed on the structure of the piece, perhaps in an attempt to attract the right audience.

Inside this play, is a good play waiting to come out.

A tough producer sometimes has to stand up to the creatives to deliver better ‘art.’

For tickets go to : https://southwarkplayhouse